October 12: On to Tucson

 We didn't plan very well and had a very long drive on this leg of our journey.  Just to make it more confusing (but less painful) we drove into another time zone.  Arizona does not do daylight saving. 

As we drove along, I kept seeing these huge, long trains.  New Mexico must be the land of super long trains.  I can understand why this works for them.  They are traveling across high desert land that is sparsely populated with very few towns and cities.  It was amazing to see these trains being pulled by three engines with over 100 cars.

Even with the diversion of long trains, the view was limited.  I love the mountains but the terrain was not diverse.  It took us 8 hours to reach Tucson and we were tired and road-weary when we got there.

My brother Tom and sister-in-law Betty were happy to welcome family and their house is warm and inviting.  That certainly made up for the length of the drive in one day. But I felt like a bad planner to have made this kind of tiring mistake.  One of the things we learned from this trip is that we are out of practice doing long road trips.  We remembered to pack trashy snacks for the road and lots of water, but we did not take into consideration the length of each day's drive and the day of arrival at each location.  When you want to see a museum, you have to check their schedule so that you can visit there.

Note taken - we will do a better job on our next road trip!